


Self Confidence (Part 2)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [109]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Autobiographical Elements, Backstory, Business Division, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Gen, Heavily Autobiographical, Mentor/Protégé, POV Female Character, Psi Corps, Self Confidence, Self Confidence Issues, Slice of Life, Telepath culture, What do P-ratings mean?, Worldbuilding, shameless self-insertion, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 03:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14487675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: No one can be reduced to mere numbers.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	Self Confidence (Part 2)

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

Danika's predicament began simply enough - she had just received her commercial license, and had been taking the bus with some coworkers from one meeting to another. Along they way they had spoken of several topics, all of which she thought innocuous enough, until at the end of the week when she found herself fired.

Little substantive reason was given for her dismissal - none was necessary - but she picked up that one of her bosses believed her comments on the bus to be racist.

Horrified, she went to visit a close mentor of hers from the Major Academy. Ms. Owens, a Black woman herself, listened to the whole story.

"Nothing I said was racist!" Danika insisted.

Ms. Owens nodded. "No, not if someone heard you correctly. But imagine someone sitting several rows away, who misheard, or only heard this one piece, and didn't realize you were quoting someone else..."

"I can't be responsible for what other people mishear!"

Ms. Owens told her that she is not (in theory), but that she also has to carefully watch what she says in public nonetheless, especially for anything that could foreseeably be misheard.

"You need to carefully watch the thoughts of those around you at all times," she said. "That way you'll know if something's being misheard."

Danika couldn't believe her ears. "But I was on a bus! You can't expect me to be able to pay attention to the thoughts of everyone on a _whole bus_ , all at once!"

"Of course you can."

_A whole bus?!_

She didn't know what shocked her more - the expectation that she should do such a thing, or her mentor's belief that she was capable of it.

"But I'm only a P3!" exclaimed Danika. "There were over fifty people on that bus! That's impossible!"

"I know you can do it," Ms. Owens said confidently.

"I'm only a P3!"

"And who made the ratings?"

Danika knew the answer - normals. Normals had made the ratings, and assigned one to her when she was a teenager. One day she had been a normal girl, entering high school, the next, she was _a number_.

"Normals," Danika said aloud.

"Exactly. And you will let them tell you what you can do and what you can't do, based on a number they assigned you at fourteen?" _I know you can do it._

Danika thought about the conversation for the whole way home. She had worked with Ms. Owens for a long time, developing her telepathic skills, but she still didn't believe she could pay attention to the surface thoughts of everyone on a whole _bus_ , no matter how good she was at foregrounding and backgrounding.

Perhaps, she mused, it didn't actually matter if she could or couldn't do it, because her teacher's point had been deeper. Danika was thinking like a mundane. She'd used her rating as _an excuse_. The ratings had been developed to classify and control telepaths, to keep them dehumanized and "in their place," sorted out into this job and that based on some supposedly unchanging, innate "ratings." Few openly challenged that thinking, even in the Corps. Ms. Owens was an exception.

Ratings were never the "whole story" to anyone's ability. Telepathy was more complicated than a single number. And there was usually more than one way to accomplish any task in life, to overcome any given obstacle.

Was there a way to do it, that she just didn't yet know?

Perhaps, she considered, she only needed to pay attention to the surface thoughts of those in earshot, and her teacher had said "the entire bus" to make a point, to break her out of her self-imposed limitations.

Could she actually attend to the surface thoughts of everyone on a crowded bus?

Maybe her teacher was right, and she could do it - maybe she was holding _herself_ back, and using the language of mundanes, the thinking of mundanes, and the classifications of mundanes to do it. It was safer to say "I'm just a P3!" than to try to do something so bold, and no doubt fail many times.

Could she perhaps watch for the emotional "ping" of someone misunderstanding, and feeling offended?

She tried to be aware of the thoughts of everyone on the bus with her. It wasn't the same as watching for an emotional "ping," of course, but she thought she'd at least try to do what Ms. Owens believed she could. She failed, but she was no longer so entirely sure it was impossible.


End file.
